Stoney Eskew has heard it all. Elite athletes, people looking to lose weight or maintain weight loss, folks who can’t figure out why they’re working out like crazy but can’t seem to budge that last 5 pounds.

Like some kind of wellness wizard, Eskew, a metabolic expert, personal trainer and weight loss specialist, lugs around a weird-looking machine that can actually help anybody looking to vastly change their fitness levels — all they have to do is strap on a mask connected to a hose and breathe while riding a stationary bike or running on a treadmill.

The data Eskew collects from that transaction, which takes about 30 minutes, will tell her everything she needs to know to recommend specific workouts — including how long, how often and how intense — as well as caloric intake and other nutritional advice that will help shed weight or amp up metabolism.

The dog-eared file folder that I’ve been keeping on the Leadville Trail 100 mountain bike race still has the route and training tips from 2002, which is when I first decided that my love of mountain biking and my personal goals should collide at the famous “Race Across the Sky.”

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Lance Armstrong waves as he wins the Leadville Trail 100 in 2009.

What happened between then and now?

Well, let’s see, there was cancer. Then a guy in a pickup truck hit me while I was walking across the street. After chemo, radiation, six surgeries and several years of physical therapy, I lost 30 pounds, got in shape and finally made the transition to a full-suspension bike… but in the meantime, Lance Armstrong happened.

Since 2008, when His Livestrongness first competed in the 100-mile, high-altitude extreme test of craziness, no one has been able to get into the darned thing. And it was tough enough before that.

“We stop counting at about 8,000,” says Karen Jayne Leinberger, the media liaison for Life Time Fitness -– which had sponsored the race for six years before buying the rights just before the 2010 season. She estimates that since Armstrong made the race an international target for “citizen bikers,” the number of entrants comes closer to 10,000, for a lottery that allows 1,500 in.

Travel and OutWest editor Kyle Wagner grew up in Pittsburgh and lived in Lake County, Ill., and Naples, Fla., before moving to Denver in 1993, where she reviewed restaurants for Westword before moving to The Denver Post in 2002. She considers the best days to be those that involve her teenage daughters and doing something outside, preferably mountain biking or whitewater rafting.

Dean Krakel is a photo editor (primarily sports) at The Denver Post. A native of Wyoming, he has authored three books, "Season of the Elk," "Downriver" and "Krakel's West." An avid kayaker, rafter, mountain biker, trail runner, telemark skier and backpacker, Dean's outdoor adventures have taken him around the world.

Douglas Brown was raised about 30 miles west of Philadelphia in West Chester, Pennsylvania, where he spent a lot of time running around in the woods and fields (where he hunted and explored), and in the ocean (where he surfed and stared at the horizon). Now he lives in Boulder and spends as much time hiking, running, skiing and boarding the High Country (and the Boulder foothills) as possible.

Ricardo Baca is the entertainment editor and pop music critic at The Denver Post, as well as the founder and executive editor of Reverb and the co-founder of The UMS. Happy days often involve at least one of these: whitewater rafting, snowshoeing, vintage Vespas, writing, camping, live music, road trips, snowboarding or four-wheeling.